CRITICAL RACE THEORY READING OF THE MAIN CHARACTER IN THE ZONE OF INTEREST (2023) BY JONATHAN GLAZER

Abstract

The Zone of Interest (2023) is one of director Jonathan Glazer's works that depicts the life of a Nazi family behind the walls of the Auschwitz concentration camp, highlighting the hidden brutality behind the seemingly peaceful routine of a domestic space. Rudolf Höss, the main character in the film, demonstrates how the racist ideology embraced by the National Socialist regime actively shapes the domestic routines, psychological compartmentalization, and complicit moral indifference of both individual perpetrators and their immediate social circles. The purpose of this study is to analyze how this racist ideology is portrayed through the main character and how it impacts the social attitudes that developed within society during the Holocaust. The method used is a qualitative descriptive approach grounded in textual and visual analysis, operationalizing Delgado and Stefancic's Critical Race Theory (CRT). Specifically, the analysis is guided by CRT’s core tenets of the "ordinariness" of racism—the concept that white supremacist hegemony is constructed as a normal, everyday reality—and structural embeddedness, which explores how institutions insulate individuals from the moral consequences of systemic oppression. The findings of this study indicate that racism does not always manifest itself in overt, localized forms of spectacle violence, but is sustained through indifference, bureaucratic detachment, and domestic routines that appear deceptively normal. Ultimately, this study affirms that The Zone of Interest presents a powerful critique of a racist power system that is deeply embedded in everyday life, demonstrating how ideological violence can be banally normalized and perpetuated across generations. Keywords: Critical Race Theory, Ordinariness of Racism, Rudolf Höss, Structural Embeddedness, The Zone of Interest